As the secretary bent to touch the door it suddenly flew violently open and Nixon, quivering in every limb and with his face afire, sprang in and seized upon the other with a violence of passion which would have been deadly had there been any strength behind it.
It was but child's play for so strong a man as Mr.Steele to shake off so futile a grasp, and he did so with a rasping laugh.

But the next moment he was tottering, blanched and helpless, and while struggling to right himself and escape, yielded more and more to a sudden weakness sapping his life-vigor, till he fell prone and apparently lifeless on the lounge toward which, with a final effort, he had thrown himself.
"Good! Good!" rang thrilling through the room, as the old man reeled back from the wall against which he had been cast.

"God has finished what these old arms had only strength enough to begin.

He is dead this time, and it's a mercy! Thank God, Miss Olympia! thank God as I do now on my knees!" But here catching the mayor's eye, he faltered to his feet again, saying humbly as he crept away: "I couldn't help it, your Honor.

I shouldn't have been listening at the door; but I have loved Miss Olympia, as we used to call her, more than anything in the world ever since she came to make my old master's house a place of sunshine, and all I'm sorry for is that God had to do the finishing which twenty years ago I could have done myself.".